Abstract

Active modelocking of semiconductor diode lasers in an external cavity by synchronous electrical pumping is a simple and attractive method for generation of short optical pulses in the wavelength region of interest for optical communication [1]. Up to now, most attention has been paid to the time-averaged behaviour of pulse width, optical spectrum and time-bandwidth product, but pulse intensity fluctuations are of major importance in communications and logic applications. In this paper we investigate this type of noise and demonstrate a partial suppression by cw injection locking. Similar results have previously been demonstrated in a CO₂ laser [2].

© 1985 Optical Society of America